Holes Reboot Ordered at Disney+ (With a Twist on the Movie and Novel)

Dig this: a Holes TV series is in the works for Disney+. The streaming service has ordered a pilot for a new adaptation of author Louis Sachar’s 1998 novel, which was turned into a 2003 film from Walt Disney Pictures that starred Shia LeBeouf, Sigourney Weaver, and Jon Voight. Alina Mankin (Lodge 49, Katy Keene) is writing and executive producing with Liz Phang (90210, Yellowjackets) serving as showrunner on the potential series; Phang is also executive producing with Drew Goddard (The Good Place, Marvel’s Daredevil) for Disney’s 20th Television. Variety first reported the news.

The official logline: “In this reimagining of the beloved 1998 book from Louis Sachar, a teenage girl is sent to a detention camp where the ruthless Warden forces the campers to dig holes for a mysterious purpose.”

RELATED: What’s New on Disney+ in January 2025

Both the Newbery Medal-winning novel and film follow Stanley Yelnats IV — a good kid cursed because of his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather. Although innocent of a crime for which he’s convicted, Stanley is sent to a boys’ detention center at Camp Green Lake: a dry, flat wasteland that was once the largest lake in Texas.

Nicknamed “Caveman” by his fellow campers — a motley crew that includes Zero, Squid, X-Ray, Magnet, Armpit, and Zigzag — Stanley and the gang are ordered by the Warden to “build character” by digging holes five feet deep and five feet wide. Stanley soon figures out that the Warden, along with the mean Mr. Sir and camp counselor Mr. Pendanski, are looking for something: something that belonged to the infamous outlaw Kissin’ Kate Barlow.

“My mom’s been a schoolteacher for her whole life and, as such, she’s served as a de facto book scout for Goddard Textiles,” Goddard told Variety. “She always knows what ‘the kids’ are into long before everyone else does. Holes was the first book she suggested to me — this was back in the late ‘90s — and she was positive it was going to be a phenomenon. It feels good to bring it full circle for Mrs. Goddard and her sixth grade class.”

Goddard added that Mankin, whose credits include episodes of The Mindy Project and Anne with an E, and Phang, a writer-producer on the television series Foundation, Colony, Locke & Key, The Haunting of Hill House, and the novel adaptation The Strain, have “done a wonderful job capturing Louis Sachar’s unique spirit. To say much more about what they have in store would spoil all the fun.”

Walden Media, which co-produced 2003’s Holes with Disney, is producing the pilot. Mike Medavoy, also a producer on the film via his production company Phoenix Pictures, will executive produce with rights holder Shamrock executive producing; Andrea Massaro, a producer of the Goddard-created Hulu series High Potential, is an executive producer for Goddard Textiles (Bad Times at the El Royale, the upcoming The Matrix 5).

2003’s Holes — starring Shia LeBeouf as Stanley Yelnats IV, Sigourney Weaver as the Warden, Jon Voight as Mr. Sir, Tim Blake Nelson as Dr. Pendanski, Patricia Arquette as Kate Barlow, Dulé Hill as Sam the Onion Man, Henry Winkler as Stanley’s father, Khleo Thomas as Zero, and Eartha Kitt as Madame Zeroni — is available to stream now on Disney+.